Private Thoughts: Oghren's Search
by Mischieff
Summary: Oghren's thoughts and memories as he searches the deep roads for Branka.


Oghren took out a small pick ax and marked the wall that way he would know he had searched this tunnel and had found nothing. The same thing he had found again and again for weeks and weeks of searching. He had been everywhere he could think of, every place he could reach, that he knew of, that he had ever heard of and still no sign of her. How could she and the whole sodding house just disappear? By all the ancestors they had to have left a trail or at least some trace, something to show where they had gone. He knew where she was going but not how to get there. No one did. No one had been there in over five hundred years. She had found some maps, faded and brittle with age. He had looked over them but nothing he had seen looked like them. If she was going to someplace forgotten… but there was one more tunnel to look through, one last resort. He was running low on supplies, a little food, some water, not enough really but he had to check it out. That could be it, it might be the one

He gathered up the few supplies and started out. It would take many many hours of walking. He was out past the patrols, past where the squads went out, past even the Legion of the Dead. At any time he could be surrounded by darkspawn or overwhelmed by spiders or attacked by deepstalkers or buried under a cave in, or even worse... he could step wrong on a loose stone, trip, break his ankle and starve to death out here or just go insane. If he wasn't already. There were many back in Orzamar thought he already had. The worst would be to be taken alive by the darkspawn, but no he wouldn't let that happen. Before you go out to the deep roads you make that decision about what you'll do, so that when it happens you know. But he didn't think it would come to that.

Walking, walking, walking for hours and hours and hours for miles upon miles upon miles. He didn't even know how long it had been since he had left Orzamar. He didn't like these long walks, in the dark and silence, too much time to think, to remember. He didn't want to think, he wanted to find her, find where she went, bring her back home. But here in the dark and the silence he could admit it. He should have seen this coming. He knew what she was after, he just didn't think that she'd actually try to find it. That she would actually be stupid enough to go searching for it. That she would leave without… that she would leave him behind. She had always been interested in the anvil. She read all she could about it, spent hours in the Shaperate researching it, but he didn't take it seriously. It was long gone, lost, destroyed by darkspawn or rusted away by the centuries. But she wouldn't let go. She was like that. Even in the early days, that focus, that single minded determination is one of the things that first attracted him to her. She was good enough looking but it was when she talked about forging, how she'd get excited about her ideas, the things she wanted to try, the stuff she could make, the things she wanted to do. You get her started and her eyes would light up, burn with that intensity with that fire. He'd been burned by that fire, sure, but he had also been warmed by it. She would talk so fast you could barely keep up. She was brilliant. He loved listening to her talk even if he didn't understand all the technical stuff, just watching her was enough.

They met at a Proving. He had just gotten back from first first trip to the deep roads, and was about to compete for the first time. He got so wrapped up listening to her talk about the difference in the composition of steel that he nearly missed his match. She wished him luck and after he got in the field he looked for her just in case and by the Stone if she hadn't fought her way to the front row and waved at him. The guy never stood a chance. Afterwards they celebrated at Tapsters, her talking about forging and him telling her about the deep roads and after that he took her to bed. By first bell, he was hooked and he knew it and didn't care. She built a forge on one end of their house, and made all his weapons and armor, and night after night they would forge together.

When he would return from the deep roads, they would be at it for hours, til neither of them could even walk. Then she would listen to his stories, ask to hear them again and again, ask to hear her favorite ones. When he won honors for bravery, she dressed in her parade armor and said the pride that she was his wife. He would listen to her ideas about making a new fuel. Her mother had died of black lung and she wanted to do something about it. She attacked it with passion, trying everything, failure after failure and still she kept at it, till she found it. He was proud of her, when she was named a Paragon he dressed in his finest armor (that she had made for him special) and said with pride that he was her husband.

But then something changed. They moved to the Diamond Quarter, and with the fuel problem solved there was just the anvil. She had been obsessive, it's what made her such a good smith, but it was more than that. She had always been a little nuts, but she was a genius and everyone knows they are a bit off. It made her interesting, but then it got worse. She got paranoid. She would accuse him of moving things on her, say that he was trying to stop her. He never did but maybe he should have. She got more and more involved with the anvil, focusing on that to the exclusion of her forging, which she had always loved. His armor went unmended, his blade unsharpened. But the maps, that's what should have tipped him off that she was serious. He thought (hoped?) it would be a passing thing, that she would realize like she always had that it was impossible to find and give it up. Sod it! He should have stayed home. He should have refused that last trip to the deep roads. He should have stayed and watched her, but she had stopped talking about it. He thought she had finally given up, but he should have known. Maybe... he did. Maybe... he didn't know what to do, how to stop her. She was retreating from him, he was losing her and he didn't know what to do. So he... so he ignored it like a sodding coward! Too afraid to face it, to confront her, to stop her. Too afraid to admit that he could lose her, perhaps more afraid to admit that maybe he already had.

When he got back, they were all gone. He was told that she had left with everyone. He searched the house, tore through everything, for something to indicate where she had gone but nothing. All the maps, notes, everything was gone. And there was no note for him, no explanation, no good bye, no... nothing. He started drinking that night and didn't stop. When he woke up he went to the Shaperate and read everything and then started searching and now, weeks later, he had nothing to show for it. Only one last tunnel left, one last possibility, if this wasn't it... if there was no sign here... then there was nothing left for him to do. It would take teams, searching for weeks if not months for something not on any map, for something lost and forgotten, for a pebble on a mountain and he knew that he couldn't do it alone.

Finally, here it was, the last one. He followed it, slowly, quietly. This had to be it. He could see tracks. Then up there on the wall a mark. She always took samples from the walls, this had to be her mark. He got close and ran his finger along the sharp edge of the stone. It was his own mark. He had made a circle, cut back into another tunnel... it was a dead end. He felt the strength run out of him. He fell to his knees. He was so tired. He fell to the ground and slept. He awoke in the darkness and for the slightest moment thought to just close his eyes and stay there. But he got up and slowly started back to Orzamar.

He would go to the assembly. She was a Paragon, the only one in four generations. He would get them to send out patrols. If they put enough people out, they could find something, maybe… Until then he would have to wait... but he couldn't give up. Even when he returned to the Stone, he would continue searching for her there till he found her. But even now he knew, that he would never find her. Not his Branka, not the girl who tricked the guard into letting her into the noble's area in the Provings to watch him fight, not the woman who said before the ancestors that she would be his wife till they returned to the Stone, not the person who would make him tell her the story about how he got separated from his company in the deep roads and was surrounded by five hurlocks and killed them all, three times in a row, not the one who would pick fights just so they could make up. No, his Branka he would never find, not here, not in Orzamar, not in the home they had shared, not in these tunnels or caves, not anywhere. She was lost to him.

Maybe he couldn't have stopped her. Maybe there was really nothing he could have done but at least he could have tried. He could have fought for her. Then if he had failed at least he could live with that, but he had done nothing. Now, he would have to live with that and he didn't know how. Perhaps that is why he searched all these tunnels, risked his life and sanity looking for some clue, to quiet that voice in his head that whispered that this was his fault, that he had allowed her to go out of fear, that he could have stopped her but didn't. That despite honors and the piles of darkspawn that had died by his hand he was nothing but a sodding coward. And no, that would never stop, he would always blame himself. Nothing would ever quiet that voice.

Well, almost nothing. He pulled out a flask and took a drink. It was dangerous to drink out here, no water and drink makes you an easy target but he didn't care. This was the strong stuff too. He'd been saving it. He preferred ale but that didn't stop the voices or the guilt. For that you needed the strong stuff and lots of it. "You'll turn into a worthless drunk you keep that up." he heard Branka say, so clear and loud that he turned around nearly expecting her to be there. But she wasn't. Maybe he had gone insane, maybe that was better, maybe that's what happenes when you can't stand the pain anymore. He had seen it happen to dying men, but he wouldn't let it happen to him, not yet. He blinked his eyes until his vision cleared and took another drink. That's what the drink is for. Soon he wouldn't remember what he was doing out here, what he was searching for... at least for a while.


End file.
